To Darkness and to Death

In the small Adirondack town of Millers Kill, an old lumberman sits in the dark with his gun across his knees. Not far away, an unemployed logger sleeps off his bender from the night before. The owner of the town's last paper mill tosses in his bed. And a young woman, one of three heirs to the 250,000-acre Great Camp, wakes alone in darkness, bound and gagged.

Chief of Police Russ Van Alstyne wants nothing more than a quiet day of hunting in the mountains on his fiftieth birthday. His wife needs to have the town's new luxury resort ready for its gala opening night. The Reverend Clare Fergusson expects to spend the day getting St. Alban's Church ready for the bishop's annual visit. Her long-distance suitor from New York expects some answers about their relationship during his weekend in town.

In Millers Kill, where everyone knows everyone and all are part of an interconnected web of blood or acquaintance, one person's troubles have a way of ensnaring others. What begins as a simple case of a woman lost in the woods leads to a tangle of revenge, blackmail, assault, kidnapping, and murder. As the hours tick by, Russ and Clare struggle to make sense of their town's plunge into chaos---and their own chaotic emotions.

Something terrible waits in the ice-rimed mountains cradling Millers Kill. Something that won't be content with just one death---or two. . .

In To Darkness and To Death , Julia Spencer-Fleming continues her moving story of the way a small town, as well as a great city, can harbor evil, and the struggle of two honest people to deal with the ever-present threat of their feelings for one another.

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Another good installment in this series. Clare spends a ton of time out of church searching for a missing woman and comforting the family of another woman who was beaten nearly to death. Others try to cover up crimes or accidents, only getting into deeper trouble. All culminates at a gala that turns into a catastrophe. By the end of the book Russ makes an important decision about his feelings for Clare.

In the Bleak Midwinter is the first in this series. I have enjoyed reading the author's character descriptions and the renderings of the starkness and beauty of the region.

Wolfespearl
Feb 21, 2012

It started with a search for a missing person, but as the story advances the complications grew. Always an excellent read, this one will keep the reader busy trying to keep everyone and their stories and alibis straight.